Blending the best of Crime Fiction and Science Fiction this was the ‘cult’ novel of 2010. If you are a fan of James Ellroy, Philip K. Dick, Cormac McCarthy, China Mieville, J G Ballard and even John le Carre then it’s definitely worth reading the Opening Extract to get hooked. Detective John Finch has just one week to solve a bizarre double murder with links to a genocide 600 years earlier...
In a deserted tenement in an occupied city, two dead bodies lie on a dusty floor as if they have fallen out of the air itself. One corpse is cut in half, the other is utterly unmarked. One is human, the other isn't. The city of Ambergris is half ruined, rotten; its population controlled by narcotics, internment camps and acts of terror. But its new masters want this case closed, urgently. Detective John Finch has just one week to solve it or be sent to the camps. With no ID for the victims, no clues, no leads and precious little hope, Finch's fate that hangs in the balance. But there is more to this case than first meets the eye. Enough to put Finch in the cross-hairs of every spy, rebel, informer and traitor in town. Under the shadow of the eldrich tower the occupiers are raising above the city, Finch is about to come face to face with a series of mysteries that will change him and Ambergris forever. Why does one of the victims most resemble a man thought dead for 100 years, what is the murders' connection to an attempted genocide nearly 600 years ago, and just what the secret purpose of the occupier's tower?
I can't remember ever reading a book like Finch. Audacious... extravagant... macabre. I'm impressed Stephen R. Donaldson Fungal noir. Steampunk delirium. Paranoid spy thriller ... A clear signal, if one were ever needed, that VanderMeer remains one of modern fantasy's most original and fearless pioneers Richard K. Morgan Wow, what a cool novel. Heavy with shadows and dark as sin detective fantasy... Hell I loved it. In fact, I'm a little jealous Joe R. Lansdale Finch just blew me to hell and gone... Think Cormac McCarthy... with an amazing nod to Lovecraft and still that doesn't capture the spell this novel casts Ken Bruen Fans of the avant garde will appreciate VanderMeer's latest work. VanderMeer skillfully pairs horror motifs with dreamlike imagery Wall Street Journal One of the most eagerly awaited books of the year... If H.P. Lovecraft had collaborated with Raymond Chandler the result might have been something like this... a chilling, thrillingly bizarre original The Times
Author
About Jeff VanderMeer
Jeff VanderMeer is an award-winning novelist and editor. His fiction has been translated into twenty languages and has appeared in the Library of America’s American Fantastic Tales and in multiple year’s-best anthologies. He writes nonfiction for the Washington Post, the New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Times, and the Guardian, among others. He grew up in the Fiji Islands and now lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with his wife.
